You have to enable the optimized import process by adding the DWORD key OptimizeOrgImport with value 1 to the registry hive of Dynamics CRM (see the detailed description http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977867)

Recently, I had a problem during an import of an organization which failed with following error

Message: Exception during import of organization (Name=’‘, Id=3e58a0cc-c277-df11-b2c1-0050569473db):
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: A row with a duplicate key cannot be added to the object ‘dbo.SystemUserOrganizations’-object with unique index ‘SystemUserOrganizations_CrmUserId’

The organization which I tried to import was a backup of an organization which was created in the same deployment. The import runs successful on every other deployment. With help of the Microsoft Support, we identified the cause of the issue: the OptimizeOrgImport key.

The knowledgebase article for OptimizeOrgImport contains following passage:

When you use the registry entry OptimizeOrgImport and have the value of this entry set to 1, you cannot import the same organization database more than one time.
If you want to import the same organization database more than one time, you must do one of the following things:

• Set OptimizeOrgImport = 0 and use the normal import process.
• Delete the organization, and then import the organization again.

This passage is a little bit misleading, as the optimized import process fails already at the first time, if the organization was created in the same deployment. In order to import a backup of an organization into the originating deployment, you have to deactivate OptimizeOrgImport.

However, Dynamics CRM allows you to create your own id for a record. The primary key of a record is stored in its Key-Property. On all default entities, for example account, the id property is marked as Valid for create (see accountid). This means, the sdk allows you to pass your own id.

using System;
using Microsoft.Crm.Sdk;
 
namespace PreCreateKeyPlugin
{
    public class PreCreateKeyPlugin : IPlugin
    {
        public void Execute(IPluginExecutionContext context)
        {
            if (IsPreCreate(context))
            {
                if (context.InputParameters.Contains(ParameterName.Target))
                {
                    DynamicEntity target = context.InputParameters[ParameterName.Target] as DynamicEntity;
 
                    if (target != null)
                    {
                        Guid customId = new Guid("{d7256b93-a5b5-45f9-9f2d-a1838279c35c}");
 
                        target["accountid"] = new Key(customId);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
 
        private bool IsPreCreate(IPluginExecutionContext context)
        {
            return  context.MessageName == MessageName.Create && 
                    context.Stage == MessageProcessingStage.BeforeMainOperationOutsideTransaction;
        }
    }
}

If you register this plugin for pre-create on the account entity and create a new account, it will have the provided id.

Please keep in mind, that you are in the responsibility to assign an new GUID for every execution of this plugin, but this should be clear when working with primary keys.

function GetFieldLabel(fieldname)
{
  var field = crmForm.all[fieldname+ '_c'];
 
  if (field != null){
    return field.firstChild.firstChild.nodeValue;
  }
  else {
    return '';
  }
}
 
alert(GetFieldLabel('subject'));

The other option is, to retrieve the label for the user language from the crm service. I will cover this in another article.

For example, if you integrate a web application with an IFrame, you have to set different addresses for internal and external access. Or, if the application is only accessible from inside your network, you can show a message that it is not available for external users.

With help of Form Scripting you can detect an external request with little effort. You can make use of the function prependOrgName(”) which adds the organization prefix to the argument, if it is necessary. That means for an external request, it returns always the argument which you have passed.

function IsExternalRequest() 
{
  var ifdTestValue = prependOrgName('');
  var isIFDCall = ifdTestValue == '';
 
  return isIFDCall;
}

Calling IsExternalRequest will return true, if the request comes from an external network range. You could also define this function globally in the form context (see also http://www.stunnware.com/crm2/topic.aspx?id=JS5)

IsExternalRequest = function() 
{
  var ifdTestValue = prependOrgName('');
  var isIFDCall = ifdTestValue == '';
 
  return isIFDCall;
}

With large organizations, the most likely problem is that the import process runs into a timeout when it updates the user mapping. Update Rollup 8 contains a fix for this problem which has to be enabled manually. See http://xrm.ascentium.com/blog/crm/Post768.aspx.

Another common issue is that the import fails with the following error

ExecuteNonQuery requires an open and available Connection. The connection’s current state is closed.

This error is likely caused by an issue in the .NET 2 Framework. See this article of the EMEA CRM Support team for a description
http://blogs.msdn.com/emeadcrmsupport/archive/2009/10/12/error-while-importing-an-organization-executenonquery-requires-an-open-and-available-connection.aspx

Another cause of this issue are reports which could not be published to the report server by any reason. For example, reports which are spiced up with custom assemblies cannot be published without the referenced assemblies. The import will fail when it tries to publish such a report. In this case enable the tracing, which generates a trace file for the mmc-console. With help of this file you can identify the report which is making problems. To solve the issue, you can either delete it directly from the database (unsupported) or you delete it prior to the backup of the originating system. After the successful import, you can import the problematic report again.

See this thread in the CRM Deployment forum for further description http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/crmdeployment/thread/1336bb5d-a119-44e3-83dd-1f557edccc31

In order to look whether there are pending or failed mails in your system, you can use following search. As you can see, it is based on the existing view ‘My pending E-mails’. You simply have to remove the ‘Owner = current user’ condition.

If the result of this search contains mails which are in pending state since ages or have failed to send, it’s debugging time again. If you are using the Outlook Client for sending the mail, then take a look at http://blogs.msdn.com/emeadcrmsupport/archive/2009/12/18/how-to-activate-crm-4-0-platform-tracing-on-server-client-and-e-mail-router.aspx for a description on enabling the tracing.

The debugging on the E-Mail Router side is a little bit more complex, but it is explained in detail in this article http://blogs.msdn.com/benlec/archive/2008/03/25/how-to-implement-logging-for-the-microsoft-crm-4-0-e-mail-connector.aspx

Dynamics CRM Blog List
Dynamics CRM Blog List (60)

Update
The list was updated with some more blogs. If your blog is missing, please leave a comment and I will update the list.

The language code 1033 is not a valid language for this organization

I searched the net, but the only things I found was that this error is listed as an error code of Dynamics CRM (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb930493(loband).aspx) and a thread in the Dynamics Forums (http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/crm/thread/70bbbf36-1ecb-443e-852a-bebaa70c7206), but sadly without a solution.

After contacting the Dynamics CRM support team, the cause of this error was found in a matter of minutes. The system was redeployed from an installation with German base language to a system with English base language. This is an unsupported scenario.

Neither there was a warning at the redeployment wizard, nor is this mentioned in the Implementation Guide (at least, I haven’t found it there). The support engineer provided me following excerpt there this scenario is described as unsupported

The original deployment and the new deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM must be the same base language.

NOTE: Redeployment between different base languages, for example from English to French, is not supported.

To bad that this snippet is only included in the course material for the Installation and Deployment exam and not in the Implementation Guide. The only solution was to do a full reinstall of Dynamics CRM with the same base language as the originating system and to do the reployment again.

Update
In the meantime I got new feedback from the support engineer (thank you José) who is responsible for my case. Microsoft will document this scenario either with a knowledgebase article or by adding the quoted note to the Implementation Guide.

System.InvalidOperationException: ExecuteNonQuery requires the command to have a transaction when the connection assigned to the command is in a pending local transaction. The Transaction property of the command has not been initialized.

The solution of this problem was quite simple (after the reason was found). The application pool of the system had insufficient rights for the organization database.

To get the system up and running again you have to

1. Identify the identity of the application pool
2. Ensure the app pool idenity has a sql user assigned for the organization database
3. Grant the app pool identity the right db_owner on the organization database
4. Restart IIS

The IPluginExecutionContext contains the property CallerOrigin which will tell us more about the origin which triggered the plugin execution.

The CallerOrigin is populated with one of these four types

• Application – The user has triggered the event (by creating or editing a record).
• AsyncService – The async service triggered the event (by workflow execution).
• WebServiceApi – An application which makes use of the crm web service triggered the event.
• OfflineOrigin – The event was triggered by replaying offline actions while going online.

This sample shows how to make use of this property (the sample is part of the sdk article Online vs. Offline Plug-ins)

using System;
using Microsoft.Crm.Sdk;
using Microsoft.Crm.SdkTypeProxy;
 
public class OnlinePlugin : IPlugin
{
   public void Execute(IPluginExecutionContext context)
   {
      // Check to see if this is a playback context.
      CallerOrigin callerOrigin = context.CallerOrigin;
 
      if (callerOrigin is OfflineOrigin)
      {
         // This plug-in was fired from the playback queue after the user
         // selected to go online within Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook.
         return;
      }
      else
      {
         // Do something here.
      }
   }
}